18 hours in America

I am en route to the East Coast of the US to deliver a pitch presentation. All told I'll be on the ground about 18 hours. 

There are a number of strange things about this trip; firstly it's a competitive pitch, which is an unfamiliar situation for me as I'm usually in the room because of the unique nature of my offering.  The client doesn't quite know what it wants, except to say that the approach must be different, innovative and never tried in the sector before. 

Secondly, I'm presenting on behalf of a consortium that I was invited to join after the initial round of presentations so it isn't just my reputation on the line. Actually, given that almost all my business is 'non-US' I have less to lose reputationally than my would-be partners. However, that also means I'm presenting content not my own with the other partners joining down the phone line. This is never ideal. I have a long flight to internalise as much as I can and my ability to think on my feet will have to do the rest. 

Thirdly, (but related to the above) I have no prior relationship with anyone in tomorrow's room. I'm only there because the consortium reckons I can somehow add value. It will unusual for me to be so bereft of fans. 

I can't help thinking about the last time I flew the Atlantic to pitch at an American HQ. Years ago now it still stands alone as the least pleasant day of my professional career. I walked into an environment so immediately toxic that I found myself looking at the clock at 945am expecting it to say 11. The charitable explanation was that the company, long since taken over, was experiencing an intense bout of 'not invented here syndrome'. The truth was probably closer to being that I walked into a vicious turf war wherein being nasty to me was a handy surrogate for being nasty to someone else in the room. Never before or since have I been treated so rudely in a professional setting; and let's not forget that I work with the Germans, Austrians and Swiss. We called the daylong workshop off at lunchtime and I limped home to London. 

I suppose I'm about to find out what I've learned since then. 

Manichaeanism of the most feeble sort

When a consultant is sifting through his client's problems in real time there is an impulse towards diagnosis that is hard to resist.  After all, we are paid to be smart, which really means that we're paid to be smarter than everyone who has already looked at the issue.  The easiest way to appear smart is to think quickly: Even if I arrive at the same conclusion that you guys did, I got there in a fraction of the time and all on my own.  Impressive, huh?  Except that we've still only arrived at the same conclusion, which means that nothing whatsoever has been achieved.

The next trick that most consultants pull is some sort of reorganisation of the facts.  The SWOT analysis is a great way of restating everything we already know but feeling smart about it because we've identified some polar opposites: strengths v. weaknesses and opportunities v. threats.  It all feels very honest and important and forthright: We are strong and decisive people!  We aren't afraid to name our weaknesses!  We face down our threats and categorise them!  Except that in order for a SWOT properly to work every relevant issue needs to end up in a quadrant and only one quadrant at that.  Remember that dirty feeling everyone got when we finally agreed that the sales team was both a strength and a weakness?

Outside of the IT department binary categorisation is rarely your friend.  Polarities feel cool because they remind us of all those epic, Manichaean stories of childhood where good triumphs over evil and where you're either with us or agin us.  But sooner or later every binary analysis collapses under the weight of its own metaphor.  Sure, internal staff and external customers are kind of opposites as are debtors and creditors but seeking meaningful alignment between these four ideas is insane.  Which is not to say that I haven't seen someone attempt this very feat.  Right before a long overdue coffee break it was.

There is a point in any meeting where we start looking for a way of arranging things: Jim Halpert's failed attempt to lead the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin is mired in an endless list of pros and cons.  Oftentimes the consultant's job starts by putting a stop to the oversimplification: we live in a complex world and as adults we should maybe use that fact as a starting point.

Confidence = space

In business I come across as a confident person. I've been doing what I do for a long time now so when I'm brought in to think about an issue I've got a pretty good idea of what the unspoken issues are likely to be and what solutions might fit.

I do everything I can to ensure that my clients have confidence in me because it lessens my workload. A worried client costs me time on additional phone calls or face-to-face meetings that are quite hard to monetise. I need my contacts to exude confidence in me when they're discussing the project at all those internal meetings that I neither get, nor want, to be invited to. When that goes missing I get the dreaded phone call asking for an early look at a draft and my timeline is shot, which can be disastrous for the overall project.

Generally I am paid to design and deliver training programmes. A large part of what 'design' entails is making intelligent decisions in the right order. My favourite example of this is deciding on the PowerPoint template design before anyone knows how much text needs to be displayed on the screen.  It creates unnecessary conflict and heartache every time. The motivation behind this rookie error is usually as simple as someone senior in the organisation asking to 'see something' as assurance that the project is on track and the slide template looks like an easy and uncontroversial thing to show the bosses.  A better response to the political pressure is to have a meeting and run through the development timeline, explaining what decisions will be made in what sequence and why

I see my clients' confidence in me as a tangible asset that allows me to run projects at the pace that best serves that project. As with any asset it needs to be protected: good communications, dressing well and face-to-face meetings early in the process.

Erasmus

As I was driving out to visit a brand new client last Thursday I was listening to Melvin Bragg's In Our Time programme on BBC Radio 4.  The topic of the day was the northern Rennaiscance philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) and much was made of the itinerant nature of his early career: -

"(Erasmus) is all over Europe, city after city...  He's always to be found around courts.  He's a great one for collecting patronage..."

And: -

"A lot of the writing is to please people because they are paying for his career..."

Perhaps it was because that morning's meeting was with a roomful of total strangers that the description so resonated.  Is there a better description of a consultant, or of any successful seller of financial services, than someone on and off airplanes, city after city, collecting the patronage of those who can pay for our careers?  Like Erasmus I am paid by the modern princes of Europe to be clever.  Nothing gives me greater confidence than knowing that the big boss wants the project to go ahead with my involvement.

But let's not stretch the comparison too far.  Erasmus fought a vicious, losing war of words with Martin Luther over the soul of the Catholic church and the fate of Europe whereas I help drug companies sell their drugs better.

Still, about halfway through that meeting someone described me as a 'thought leader', which was a nice thing for him to say.

Update on 2012-02-19 05:47 by Stewart

During the week a learned friend questioned the parallel with Erasmus and rightfully so.  With barely suppressed bemusement he pointed out that there aren't a great many points of comparison between the career of one of the foundation thinkers of Western thought and that of a jobbing management consultant circa 2012.

What I was trying to explore was that for those who think for a living the importance of patronage hasn't changed much in 500 years.  There's a stark difference in getting work out of an organisation where the big boss likes my way of thinking and one where he or she is indifferent.  For any project to proceed the very least we external suppliers need is the absence of a veto.  If the big boss dislikes what you do then any additional time and energy spent trying to change that is most likely a sunk cost.

Music to a freelancer's ears

Is there any sweeter sound than a client saying: -

"I know this is short notice but..."

We have an issue that needs resolving and we want input from someone that we already trust.  And we need that input now.

Corporate karma

Tuesday of the first full week of the New Year is apparently the busiest day for job-hunting.  You've given yourself at least a day to get your feet back under the desk but not left it so long that the resolution to work someplace else has been forgotten.

This is also the week that old clients are most likely to get that Happy New Year! email from a consultant like me.  I send these out in waves to ensure that I properly personalise each one.  After all, these are all people with whom I have a history that must be reflected (leveraged) otherwise I might as well be cold calling. And like anyone embarking on that January job search I wait until Tuesday before starting.  That way maybe I'm less likely to be caught up in the First Great Inbox Purge of 2012.

 

With an augur’s intensity I watch my own inbox for replies.  There’s a hierarchy of outcomes from the exercise:-

1. The quick note proposing a call or meeting in the coming weeks is absolutely the most I can hope for
2. The longer note with specific feedback on last year’s results and the plans for the next twelve months isn't awful.  At least my contact took a few minutes to setout the issues that affect me personally
3. The email saying that there's been a change of roles but also giving me the name of the new contact (cc’d) isn't bad.  Managing a baton-change in a client organisation is part of my job
4. It’s hard not to read a quick note announcing a change of roles without any further information as ‘goodbye and good luck’
5. The cursory Happy New Year reply is the email equivalent of a stilted exchange of pleasantries whilst waiting for an elevator

Optimist that I am, getting no response at all is still reason for hope.  Maybe my contact isn't back at her desk for another week.  Maybe she’s gone straight into a procession of heavy-duty meetings.  Or maybe she’s surreptitiously on the job hunt herself, in which case there's no point me being on her radar until she either gets settled in a new position or resigns herself to the current role and refocuses on her 2012 To Do List.  I make a note to try again in mid-March.

I've long believed that no genuine marketing effort goes ultimately unrewarded.  Those efforts must be genuine, an ongoing part of the day-to-day job and not just the occasional paroxysm of activity intended to refill an otherwise empty calendar. And don't be surprised when that reward arrives from an unexpected direction.  Yesterday I got an unsolicited email requesting a meeting in Italy as soon as is convenient.  Not so much attributable cause-and-effect as ‘corporate karma’.

 

Approach the low-yield tasks with the right attitude and trust that the cosmos is taking note

Holidays

 One way to get to grips with the opening premise of Friday’s post is to consider our attitudes to holidays.

Sometimes your ambitions move faster than the world.  Sometimes the world moves faster than you.

Holidays are an annual ritual in paying real money to calibrate our ambitions with the pace of the world.  If you want a week of sleeping, eating and reading you buy a ‘fly’n’flop’ at a child free resort somewhere sunny.  To reconnect with your preteen kids choose Euro Disney.  Because our own scarce resources (time and money) are at stake any dissonance aggravates us so much more on holidays than in usual life; “It wasn't like this in the brochure” is a near-universal lament.

 

For eight years my family ran a 3½-star hotel on Mission Beach in Far North Queensland. I looked after the marketing on a part-time basis, which was a pretty cool job.  How could it not be when this is your workplace?

In our day Castaways on the Beach was a pretty modest operation whose prime selling point was the location.   The property had a longstanding reputation for being ‘family friendly’, offering easy access to a vast waveless beach, lots of suites with in-room cooking facilities and a short walk to a town centre that featured lots of relatively inexpensive dining options and a small supermarket.  Our in-house restaurant also offered an extensive children’s menu.  As everyone knows (or should know), ‘family friendly’ is code for “There will be screaming kids everywhere.  If this is not want you want on your holiday then best you go someplace else.” Families with younger children were consistently our most satisfied customers, not least because our business plan didn't rely on corralling our guests into the dining room three times a day.  What parent doesn't find it galling paying for a full breakfast buffet when all the kid wants is a bowl of cereal?

 

Our least satisfied customers were always honeymooners who had locked onto the picture on the website and the 3½-star tariffs but (often willfully) ignored the ‘family friendly’ signals.  Signals that included the literal words ‘family friendly’ on all our brochures, billboards, website, etc.  We accepted that our offering couldn't match the ambitions of most loved-up newlyweds and instructed the booking staff to gently warn off such customers.  Over the years we invested quite heavily in improvements to the property but intentionally stuck to the 3½-star bracket.  We were happy with our positioning at the ‘family friendly’ end of the market.

 

I have no children and a relatively high disposable income but we never attempted to build an offering that would appeal to people like me and in 2007 my family sold a thriving business.  The new owners, who have far more access to far more capital than we did, spent an actual fortune taking the place ‘upmarket’.  They refurbished the public areas, reduced the pool size to increase the bar area, added a day spa, removed most of the in-room cooking facilities and upped the tariffs by about 60%.

 

I was back in Mission Beach last July and to my childless eyes the place looks amazing.  But to a family on a budget with a brood of young kids the whole package screams “Stay Away!”  The word around town is that Castaways Resort & Spa is for up sale again.

 

The need to purchase a world that temporarily matches our ambitions is the reason why we expend so much energy researching our holidays.  We only get to spend this time and money a few times a year and it's personal.  This is why holidaying with any but the closest of friends is rarely a good idea ("It’s my holiday too, y’know") and why most of us revisit those trusted holiday places again and again and again.

Identity Economics

I've just finished reading Akerlof & Kranton's Identity Economics, a pretty lightweight exploration of the obvious idea that there is a quasi-quantifiable cost to pursuing financial gain at the expense of one's personal identity.  Much of the book is driven by the idea that 'insider' behaviours, the conformist ones that further the goals of the organisation (but also lead to personal advancement), must outweigh the social cost of being seen to conform by one's sneering peers.  There's nothing much here that wasn't explored more eloquently in John Hughes' 1985 opus The Breakfast Club.

When discussing the effect that identity economics has on education the authors focus on ways in which well-run schools (such as the Core Knowledge group run out of Colorado) create a compelling 'insider' culture: -

Because identity is closely linked to dress and self-presentation, we consider it no coincidence that a Core Knowledge school might prescribe even the nature of a student's socks. 

Identity Economics. p. 73

The premise is that how we dress acts as a constant reinforcement of who we are: conformist 'insider' versus rebellious 'outsider'; and that this internalised effect is arguably more important than how others perceive us.

I'm interested in how this idea relates to how a consultant dresses when meeting a client, especially for the first time.  If Akerlof & Kranton's idea holds true then ahead of any other considerations we need to dress for ourselves.  If I don't feel that what I'm wearing reinforces a positive self-image then that dissonance will somehow out itself during the meeting.

When starting out in life this is in no way trivial.  You didn't make it at IBM in its pomp if you didn't aspire to dress like these guys.  Reductio ad absurdum: -

Before choosing a career you need to ask yourself if you like how the successful people in that field dress

When you're paying your dues in any profession you will need to wear clothes that don't distract from the perception of your work.  You will have to wait until you're game-changingly good at what you do before you can dress in a way that draws attention to who you are as opposed to what you do.  Of course this only applies if you're serious about your career (i.e. want to be one of Akerlof & Kranton's 'insiders').  Dress in a way that says 'fuck off to the man' and sooner or later the man will get fucked off.  With you.

I like how I dress for meetings.  By this I mean I genuinely enjoy wearing those clothes because they make me feel how I need to feel when meeting a new client: established, intelligent, perceptive and 'undistracted'.  It's taken me a while to understand this and I do my best to address the myriad shifts in how I feel about a certain suit or shirt when I walk out the door in the morning.

That I never achieved the same comfort in the clothes I wore as a stand-up speaks volumes: dressing like my audience made me feel like an impostor whereas dressing like me just made me feel old.  And Andrew Watts had already cornered the market in disheveled suits.

The last frontier

For my business the United States is the last frontier.  After almost seven years working out of London I'm relatively pleased as to how my presence has grown in Europe.  I am a known quantity here now and my clients seek me out as much as I seek out them.  In December I'm starting a new project with an old client.  Our third in ten years.  Every time he changes jobs I get a call.

I wonder if the experience would have been as successful if my wife and I had chosen instead to live in the US when we left Australia in 2005.  The challenge of getting visas notwithstanding the choice was ours to make as no company forced our hand by funding the relocation.  I suppose we just liked the idea of Europe more.

I've never felt as confident walking into an American Head Office as an Australian, British, Swiss or Asian one. Nowhere else in the world are foreign accents such a source of undisguised bemusement.  I don't respond especially well to the blank-eyed apathy that seems to say: -

Buddy, we're the richest pharmaceutical market in the world.  There are over 300 million of us here.  If your idea was that good don't you think we'd have thought of it by now already?

The only genuine traction I've had on American projects has been with European owned companies.  My theory is that there's a sense that ideas should be assessed on value not provenance.  Yet America beckons and yesterday I spent an hour on the phone with a Boston consultancy whose task would be to get me into the meeting where my ideas are heard louder than my accent.

One of the problems we discussed was that most Americans in bourgeois industries like pharma are just too damn polite.  Offering a London-based consultant a project in the Midwest might be asking a bit too much of him, what with all that inconvenient travel and time away from his family and whatnot.

Convincing a client that I'll travel anywhere on the planet for the right fee can be a surprisingly high hurdle when landing an overseas gig. This is why consultants never complain about jetlag.  Convincing my potential American clients that transatlantic travel is still just travel may be a step too far and I suspect the consultancy will recommend I relocate the business to somewhere in the corridor between Boston and Philadelphia.  Hopefully he'll also suggest less extreme alternatives but I've yet to see any evidence that you can succeed in America with anything less than a display of total commitment.

Pesky verbs

Further to yesterday's thoughts on the descriptive noun (art v. science) this week I've been dealing with an even slipperier conundrum, the verb. To whit: -

What is an appropriate euphemism for 'selling'?

For some quite understandable reasons the client has decided that the guys on the road wot talk to doctors are hereon out to be referred to as 'health solutions managers'. Because nobody likes being 'sold to' right? But there sure as hell are plenty of health solutions out there that need managing: -

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts and solutions in search of problems.

I accept that in much of the world 'salesman' is a tainted word; derisively associated with sharp practices (double glazing in the UK, used cars elsewhere) but excising it from the corporate vocab leaves an glaring absence. Accountants account, researchers research and receptionists receive. Managers either run a team of people or have responsibility for a project or process or else they do... what?

We spent much of the week exploring what it might mean to manage a health solution when the behaviours we want to see exhibited in front of the customer looked consistently salesy.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then why are we struggling so hard to name the damn thing?

As I said, the client has understandable reasons for wanting this rebrand but as the behaviours (the verbs) aren't changing then was it any wonder that we spent the week wading through euphemisms?

Best thing last week

Monday morning.  Manila.  I'd asked the group for any opening thoughts.  A Filipino sales manager stands up and recites an obscure passage of my book verbatim.

I'm big in Mindinao.  No one can take that away from me.

Being present. In Manila

It's 5am in Manila.

This is the time I usually wake up but jetlag has had me in its throes for about 90 minutes already.  I've doing the calculations: two hours until breakfast with the client, three and a half hours until we start the session and at least 12 hours until we wrap up Day One of this two-dayer.

'Twas always going to be thus.  I got to the Philippines at midnight Saturday and spent all Sunday sleeping and searching out the least sweetened food the hotel had to offer.   I went to the gym and I reviewed the programme.  I gave the project my complete attention.  I was the epitome of professionalism.

This is what business travel is: an exercise in discipline.  And the rules are as obvious as they are simple: don't go crazy at the starch'n'sugar-laden buffet breakfast, say no to (at least some of) the free alcohol, decline those Sunday night drinks with ex-pat pals, don't kid yourself that you can get away with being a tourist for a day.  And never complain about the horrors of the flight or its attendant jetlag.  The job can only really begin once  you've made a connection with your audience.  Why would go out of your way to remind them that you live on the other side of the world?

I have been brought here because I am the best person to communicate certain specific ideas to their people.  If they believe they could achieve the same thing with a local or even Asia-based speaker then I wouldn't be here.  So my goal is simple: minimise all the factors competing for my attention and concentrate all available energy on being present.

Harder than it sounds.  I'll let you know how I get on.

Authoritative rapid Spanish

Some jobs lurch so far outside my control that any pressure to perform simply evaporates.

The other week I was booked to deliver an afternoon workshop for a Spanish sales team that was running two hours behind schedule after two hours.  I was due to follow the presentation of marketing plans for the rest of the year, which was essentially the centrepiece of the entire meeting.  As the morning dragged on it was obvious to everyone in the room that short of wrapping up around midnight something in the agenda would have to give.  And as often happens in such situations the client was forced to choose between delivering vital information (the marketing plans) and recouping a large sunk cost (my workshop).  The big boss chose me and instructed the marketing guys to 'just talk faster'.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I speak no language other than English.  Even under normal circumstances I find Spanish a daunting language to listen to; staccato and without the tonal range of French or Italian.  To my ears the demand that a Spanish speaker speed up was like putting a machine gun on fast forward.

For me at least, the effect was extremely compelling.  In the words of Elisa, Selma Hayek's wonderfully sexy nurse character on 30 Rock: -

I find that authoritative rapid Spanish subdues white people

Earning attention

At his non-rambling best Merlin Mann is one of my favourite contemporary online writer-thinkers.  Lately he's been energetically promoting the idea that what counts in life is not so much where we spend our time or money but rather where we focus our attention.

Every professional performer has endured the experience of a paying audience getting bored and talking through your act: -

Even after they've given you their time and money you still have to earn your audience's attention

The signals that you've yet to earn that attention are pretty blatant if you know what you're looking for.  My first corporate theatre gig, which was also my first paid work after I quit the marketing department of Coca-Cola, was a morning of team building for some long since subsumed Sydney freight company.  The maiden outing of Alternative Corporate Training Services (aka 'ACTS')* was in mid-December 1991 and the job had been a long time coming.  Our show used improv techniques to teach teamwork to corporate types but we'd really just been hired to make the group laugh for an hour whilst they set up for Christmas lunch in the room next door.  I have three distinct memories of that afternoon: -

1. There was no air conditioning so it was stifling.  It was Sydney in December and our hour was the only thing between the group and a fridge full of icy beer
2. We took the 'stage' (read: walked to the space at the front) to the Emerson, Lake & Palmer version of Fanfare to the Common Man.  The idea was the entrance would be epic but as the venue had no sound desk we'd brought along an old boom-box, which I had to clunk on then hold above my head from the back of the room
3. As we started the MD, who hadn't signed off on our appearance, sat at the foremost table took out a massive mobile phone and ostentatiously placed it in front of him

The signal was as clear as day: you have my attention but only for as long as no one (anyone) from the outside world wants it.  The amateurishness of our entrance, our visible lack of self-belief and even our dumb company name meant we hadn't earned the right to ask him to switch off his phone.  Everyone in the room knew it and our gig went downhill from there.

There's a moment with every audience when you have to 'get them'.  If that point in time passes without you earning the room's attention you will struggle thereafter.  The same rule applies with absolutely every kind of audience; a target market of prescribing doctors, an electorate or an online community.

That day in 1991 we stumbled through the hour by dropping the team building message and playing for laughs, which is all they wanted anyway.  They paid us in cash and we went directly to the Chinese restaurant up the road and spent the entire fee on our own boozy Christmas lunch.  Late that afternoon our pager beeped (we shared the one between us) and a booking agent offered us a gig at a January kick-off event.  At that second, boom-boxless, gig we earned the attention of the room and ACTS-CORPRO-Instant Theatre-Dramatic Change went on from there.

* Because we were a theatre group.  Geddit?  No?  Anyone? This was the first of our dumb company names.  After that we went for CORPRO Productions ('Corporate Impro') before getting to Instant Theatre then Dramatic Change

Cold-calling a falling man

In these straitened times every client of mine is under pressure all the time.  The cultures of every pharma company pulse with implicit threat: -

Do more with less.  Do it sooner.  Do it right the first time or else...

Some days all of this makes self-employment feel a little better.  It feels as though I have more control over my destiny.  Arrant nonsense, of course, as there's nothing like a job scare to encourage a sales team to attempt a little DIY training.

This pressure on expenses is doubly felt by the pharmaceutical industry; not only is the sector going through the same GFC as everyone else but it faces a systemic threat in the number of hugely popular products that are coming off patent.  A branded medication can expect to lose as much as 80% of its sales within six months of patent expiry and by some calculations the big research companies (aka 'my clients') will lose a further $100 billion in sales to generic manufacturers in the next three years.

This is old news and the industry is responding.  Pfizer is closing research facilities in the UK and invest in sales teams in China.  Novartis has been positioning itself in the generics game with Sandoz since 2002.  Roche completed a takeover of Genentech in 2009 to try and dominate the biologics market.  This year Sanofi-Aventis has bought Genzyme and Takeda has bought Nycomed.  The M&A industry has plenty of reasons to love pharma.

This can make life a little tricky for a Headcount: 1 consultant trying a few cold calls but with one eye on his summer holidays.  Here's an ex-client's response to my friendly hi-how's-it-going email: -

Yes i do remember you.  It is probably not the right time to come in -- we have just been taken over by XXXX so things are a little unsettled at the moment.  Sorry can't help at this time

 Not my finest moment as a salesman.

How to dress like a consultant

In the past I've mused about the dangers of overdressing for meetings.  The reverse is also true; the Epicurean Dealmaker usually blogs on the inner workings of Wall Street but this week he's taken aim at a risible WSJ article on women's 'business fashion'.  In the consultancy game, whether you're a man or a woman, this is advice is worth heeding: -

Clients of professional service organizations generally do not want the people who work for them to be flashy, extravagant, or prone to calling attention to themselves.  They want service.  They want reliability.  They want sobriety.  Calling excess attention to yourself in any way that is not directly related to identifying, analyzing, and solving the client's needs is both offputting and counterproductive.

An old truism of the theatre is that you shouldn't ever perform in front of anything more interesting than your act.  In front of the client it's just as important to be more interesting than your clothes.

In life, actually.

What you don't want to hear is...

Yesterday the T2 section of The Times ran a terrific interview with Reginald D Hunter, who is one of my favourite stand-ups.  The article was another exercise in Reg cultivating his persona as the thoughtful guy who tells you the things you don't want to hear, albeit in as charming and funny a manner as possible.

His latest show, Even the Devil Sometimes Tells the Truth, is apparently an exploration of what he calls 'institutionalised female privilege', a topic which will undoubtedly leave him open to accusations of misogyny.  Given that Reg is a black man raised in Georgia whose award-winning 2006 show was called Pride and Prejudice and Niggas it's fair to say he's made a career out of courting uninformed charges of prejudice.

Like all great comics he sets out to make his audience laugh then think; in that order.  He knows he's got to tread a line to do this well and in the interview he describes part of his rehearsal routine: -

OK, today I'm going to look in the mirror and work on saying these things without them being misogynist

Reg's only way to the funny is over some very thin PC ice so he's going to have to muster all of his considerable skill, craft and charisma to get his audience where he wants to go without anyone taking offense along the way.  He wants to challenge but not offend us.  Reg Hunter is a master of the dying art of telling someone what he doesn't want to hear without him hating you when you're done.

Few politicians even bother with it.  Consider the centre-right politicians the world over who are happy to be portrayed relishing the fiscal pain they're about to inflict on their economies.  Even the most naive lefty accepts that Britain has to reduce it's public spending but George Osborne still succeeds in giving offense by not looking unhappy enough.  Or at all.  A spin doctor would argue that he's 'energising his base'; which is the most immature, counterproductive and ultimately damaging political habit to come out of America in the last twenty years.  Right now Australian political discourse is being destroyed by this puerile game playing.  The death of civility and all that.

There are plenty of unpalatable things that each of us needs to hear in various aspects of our lives.  As an external consultant I'm sometimes brought into workplaces as a messenger of sorts*.   Part of my job is to communicate to people that they need to do their job differently.  Either because times have changed or because they just weren't all that good to begin with, their current performance is no longer regarded as up to scratch.

Which is a shitty thing to have to hear.

But if I offend my audience then they'll immediately stop listening to my proposed solutions and focus on reasons why I'm wrong.  In the past I've been wrong in so, so, many ways: my analysis of the problem, my suggested solution, my personal background, my accent, my dress sense, even the colour, layout and, on one memorable day, my choice of font on my slides.  Who knew Times New Roman could vex so much?

This balance between truth-telling without giving offense sits at the heart of so many jobs.  Teachers, coaches, salepeople all have to get it right.  The discipline standing in front of a (real or metaphorical) mirror and practicing how to verbalise a fault without it being received as an attack is always worth the effort.

* At least I'm a strategist-cum-trainer so I don't get involved in the outplacement work brought to life in the film Up in the Air.  Although I suppose that if you're going to get sacked then a chat with George Clooney, a man more charming than even Reg Hunter, would possibly sweeten the pill

Congresses

The problem with catching up with an overseas client attending the international medical congress being staged on your city is that he's unlikely to be the only client there. Everyone knows I work widely across the industry but no one needs to be reminded of the fact.

Non-financial overinvestment

If you've ever bought a residential property you're familiar with the principle of overinvestment.  It's the moment during the inspection when you start wondering about the state of mind of the people who are selling.  You look at your partner and whisper,

"Really?  They must've spent another thousand pounds on that?  I mean we like the place well enough but they're kidding themselves if they think they're getting their money back on whatever they spent on that skylight / fireplace / waterfall / bedroom spa unit..."

I'm not thinking about the feature that was obviously installed because the vendors thought that they'd enjoy the use of it but rather that addition they made because of a transparent thought that it would increase the resale value*.  By definition this incremental spend as an investment: something that will return them more money than they laid out.  If they don't get that additional return then they've overinvested.

There's a parallel with my sort of knowledge work.  When I have too much time on my hands I'm in danger of devoting more attention to a project than it warrants.  Sometimes I'm guilty of devoting more attention to a project than it can bear.  In either case I'm guilty of overinvestment,

"Really?  He must've spent another couple of extra days on that?  I mean we like the concept well enough but he's kidding himself if he thinks we're going to pay extra for however long he spent on those new graphics / additional background research..."

If my time is worth something when I'm busy then it's worth something when I'm not.  Allowing that figure to shift is crazy.  If I have spare time on my hands then it shouldn't be devoted to my client's goals but rather my own.

* A good rule to remember when selling a house or flat is that you're never going to guess the shade of blue the buyer wants so either paint the wall white or leave it as is

Some things I've learned

1. The Heathrow Express is best way to get into London, unless you are 3+ people with luggage, in which case a black cab is cheaper.  Don’t ever take the Piccadilly Line (Underground), it may be cheaper but it takes forever and you’ll arrive at your hotel feeling like a loser after an hour surrounded by all those sweaty backpacker
2. There are a few good hotels around Paddington, which is right at the other end of the Heathrow Express.  These are actually easier to get to and far nicer than the Heathrow airport hotels which cabs hate taking you to, forcing you onto horribly unreliable shuttle services
3. Without shredding your nerves with traffic stress, it is almost impossible to schedule appointments with two ‘London-based’ pharma companies in the one day unless both are in either Cambridge or Uxbridge.  If you're not driving don't even contemplate it
4. British clients assume that you drove to the meeting.  So do Americans.  European clients do not
5. The pharma companies based in Cambridge aren't as near to the rail station as you would think / like
6. Take a cab from Edinburgh airport
7. Meetings in Dublin are rarely anywhere interesting or fun like Temple Bar.  If you want anything like an Irish experience you'll need to get the hotel to order you a cab
8. No one wears a tie in the UK.  Nor does anyone carries a business card
9. Travel everywhere by air conditioned cab in Singapore.   The alternative is to arrive at the meeting sweating like a pig
10. Vodafone doesn't have mobile roaming in Korea.  Annoying
11. Take cabs in Seoul.  The streets are badly marked and Korean is impossibly hard to decipher on the run
12. Don't expect to use your gym gear in Beijing, the notoriously poor air quality is such that you’re in danger of making yourself ill
13. If you want to start a mild yet interesting argument over a meal in Malaysia ask the table for the recipe for an authentic lahksa 
14. An Australian wanting to compliment someone from the Gulf merely needs to say that the Burj al Arab is the architectural equal to the Sydney Opera House.  You won't be lying
15. Do not attempt to diet on a trip to Singapore.  The food is just too good
16. Discussing international travel is a great way to make conversation in Europe.  In the US it only serves to remind them that you're not from under around here 
17. Never discuss politics or religion with American clients.  When in doubt ask people to name their favourite Will Ferrell film
18. Everyone in Europe loves Barcelona FC (except a few bitter, bitter people from Madrid and Manchester)
19. Never wear leather-soled shoes in Scandinavia or Sweden in winter.  You will slip and injure your head, neck, shoulders or back
20. Don't be afraid of the Metro in Paris.  But don't confuse it with the RER.  Don't be afraid of the RER either
21. There isn't a weekend’s worth of fun in Warsaw.  Go to Cracow instead
22. Contrary to their carefully cultivated reputation, Finns have a terrific sense of humour, however, they're prone to annoyance if you actually make them laugh out loud
    
23. Public transport is brilliant in Basel.  The iPhone 'maps' app has all the details
24. Germans do not appreciate self-deprecatory humour.  Never attempt to break the ice at the start of a meeting with a flippant comment at your own expense as it will make you seem inconsequential in your audience’s eyes.  Let them make the first joke
25. The Spanish like shaking your hand every time they see you, as often as ten times over the course of a day-long meeting.  This is nice
26. If someone mentions that Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Luzern or Nuremburg are an option for an upcoming meeting then push hard to make it happen.  These cities are everyone's cliche favourites for a reason
27. Brussels isn't much more fun than Warsaw
28. Don't stress too much about mobile / data roaming charges.  Life’s too short